In the August 17th issue of this publication, the old man reminded readers that one excuse for starting this effort was to track one old man’s changing capacities as he moves through his aging years. In doing so you may note, as does the old man, that it is easier for him to use the sometimes previously recorded memories of his childhood and teens as subject matter than it is to discuss events and observations of the day. When it comes to the latter, I often find myself being less than positive about the shakers and movers of the day, bitching about generational differences and generally disapproving of the effects of the so-called technological advances that make things like this publication possible. So, indicating another aspect of those changing capacities, I take the easy road once more for another trip to that Fraser Valley village beside the Vedder River of long ago!
For a diffident child of the twenties growing up in my somewhat closed and self-centred village society of the thirties and forties, the public lands behind the dyke adjacent to our small farm patch were an immense asset. The area provided ready and soothing refuge for a sometimes lonely school boy. When the dyke failed in part during the 1948 floods and brought about removal of much of the changing growth that had made it so special for me, I still sought the restorative power of that river area behind our farm of the Depression Era when I returned to the Valley after a fifteen year absence. By the late sixties and seventies and even into the eighties, when work or relationships became too much for me, I booked off for a solo afternoon drive to the nearest dyke access to rest, walk the memories and look for its magic to put me back on course.
Those public lands had been fenced by the province on completion of the Sumas Lake Reclamation project in 1924, which spared us the cost of fencing that survey line but like every other adjoining owner we had free access to it and used it as additional grazing at times and a source of firewood as well if we ran out of other sources. The dyke and river area expanded my four-acre existence and gave me a freedom of movement I would not have had without it.
A body of water like the Vedder and its environs brings out the Huckleberry Finn Syndrome in kids, though I was never as bold as Tom Sawyer or as independent as Finn. It became a better recreation area than a formally dedicated park. We had no supervision or interference from authorities and without it we never saw the sort of vandalism and abuse so common and costly in most city or provincial parks today.
It was freely open to all in practice and had many purposes. The village church elders sometimes found a new pond after the spring freshet for poolside baptisms of the regularly accumulated conversions. Youngsters used it as a lover’s lane and often unsanctioned couples were seen from my adjacent garden plot as they walked the length of the dyke in free time weekends. There they could find some secret bower, unlikely to be discovered by the church elders, sometimes called the Gestapo by the kids in the forties, who were always on the lookout for such illegal activities after dusk.
Each year the changing courses of the streams in the river brought new surprises. New log jams, new swimming holes where water was trapped in low lying elbows by the receding freshet and always new growth in the freshly deposited silt. Steelhead and coho salmon were plentiful then and though I was not a fisherman I explored the area interminably and watched the exploits of daredevil friends from school who climbed the lofty trestles of the railway bridge and ran along the narrow top beam high above the river to its north side and back.
During excessive runoff years the freshet rose to within inches of the top of our dyke and stayed there long enough to leave seepage ponds on our low lying patch. Usually, though, the willows and cottonwoods kept budding and leafing through the flood above the water line and after the water receded I would find new little clearings and meadows with new growth. Sometimes I located dense little bowers where I could spend hours of silence with the birds or a book in the summer sunshine. Alone or with friends behind the dyke I had my escape, my refuge, my solace, my dreamland, my inspiration, my happiness!
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